Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders.
~ Diane Nash
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Leadership →
Peculiar thinking →
Every man has some peculiar train of thought which he falls back upon when he is alone. This, to a great degree, molds the man.
~ Dugald Stewart
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Benevolence →
Benevolence and self-direction (described below) are usually near the top of the values we all share. Each of us also has an internal hierarchy of values, where we rank our values based on those we find extremely important to those that don’t really motivate us at all.
~ Chris Bailey, from There are just 10 basic values
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Benevolence—in my opinion—only pops up on our radar once we have enough time, energy and resources. Whether or not it’s clear in that moment, that’s because we, for the first time, manage an honest look back and actually realize all the places where we’ve received help from others. So that’s nice for ourselves, but also for the entire human race.
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Open to →
It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.
~ Richard Cavett
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Improvement →
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Self →
I should not talk so much about myself if there was anybody else whom I knew so well.
~ H. D. Thoreau
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Hey, pay attention →
I have a routine with my journaling. Over time, that routine has changed a lot and I’m sure it will evolve farther. Currently, I start a clean A5-sized face of a page for each day. I do not read the previous day’s entry; I’m never trying to continue where I left off in my thinking as I journal. No, the journal is simply a place for me to talk to my future self. Here’s why I did that thing I did. Here’s this really great idea… but I’m letting go of it, and writing it down hoping future-me gets a chuckle at the dumb idea I was wise to drop. Sometimes I record really big wins. Sometimes I record really big losses. A wedding! A birth! A death! But mostly, I’m just capturing how I feel, why I feel, what I think, why I think, … Sometimes I spend hours painstakingly handwriting long texts. Sometimes it’s just 60-seconds and a bulleted list. Vanishingly rare is a sketch. Occasionally a flourish of colored-penciling. There are often inset headings in block letters at the sides as signposts—first instance of this, last instance of that.
It helps me pay attention to my life.
~ Austin Kleon from, Why I keep a diary
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Yes, there’s much paying of attention to my life that happens in the writing.
But the true wizardry is in the years-later rereading.
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Cogito →
I don’t think ego is good or bad, it simply is. What matters (to me) is what I do, and what I do with my ego. Do I project my ego out onto the world (the way one can project a film onto a live scene in daylight: You can see the original people and things, but the film adds color and shape and, possibly, changes one’s perceptions) and examine and evaluate others colored by my own ego? …or do I try to go deeper and imagine what others might actually be experiencing, what their ego might be like?
Foremost, you must make a decision about your ego.
~ Paul Niquette from, Recommendations: Packing for Ego-Trips
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That insanely deep dive by Niquette is a refreshingly self-aware attempt at proving who should be given credit for inventing the word “software”. The part I’ve linked, isn’t even the last part. I found myself reading and knowing there was a time when I could easily have fed my ego in such a protracted journey— but I don’t think I would have been able (back at that time) to do the self-aware zoom-out that Niquette attempts. Possibly interesting to you; Definitely the sort of thing I find myself mulling over these days.
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Your attention, please →
I’ve a strong drive to seek attention. I’ve a desire to be seen as clever. Being clever isn’t the problem; The desire is the problem. Being clever is, sometimes, just the right ingredient to help someone solve a problem. But more often than not, being clever is not helpful.
It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that my work is really about attentional design.
Becoming aware of attention. Shaping and directing it. Shifting its quality and inner experience. Leveraging it to produce work of real value.
~ Tiago Forte from, The Topology of Attention – Forte Labs
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Magic happens when I’m able to cleave the attention-seeking from the useful clever. When I’m able to remove stressors (stressors which invariably are of my own creation) then I’m free to frolic and create. Exhaustion can be a limit. Day-dreaming can be a limit if in excess. But ruminating is a certain road to ruin, every time. I regularly need to aim my attention inward: What specifically am I ruminating about? …and how, surgically, can I cut that out?
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Flattery →
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
~ Denis Diderot
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